


Trying To Find Safety In The Minefield Of Being Human

by wildenessat221b



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Friends to Lovers, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, I suppose, M/M, Pining, Tenderness, accepting that things are different now, blatent use of pathetic fallacy that my yr7 English teacher would be proud of, dubious metaphors of just about every kind you could imagine, implied mental health issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-14 01:23:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20183920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildenessat221b/pseuds/wildenessat221b
Summary: there is a graveyard somewhere in london with no ghosts. crowley takes aziraphale on a trip there.'What he wants to say is, "come here." He wants to say, "come into my arms." He wants to say, "stay forever and never hurt again." He wants to say, "the stars shine brighter for knowing you made them." He wants to say, "you turn my blood to gasoline and alight it with precious glimpses of your eyes." He wants to say, "the volumes of poetry that line my shelves quiver in inadequacy faced with the poetry of your existence." He wants to say, "the touch of your skin on mine scribes soundless litanies, the brush of your fingertips is a cathedral hymn." He wants to say, "paint the things you deny yourself on my wings, and let me wrap them around you."But of course, he settles for, "Goodnight."'





	Trying To Find Safety In The Minefield Of Being Human

After the apocalypse is averted, it happens seventeen times.

Which isn't really all that many in the grand cosmic scheme of things, and after all, when you're upwards of six thousand years old, the grand cosmic scheme of things has no choice but to become your existence. But still, it's far too many when they'd promised themselves and each other that they would refuse to live on a knife's edge. They'd vowed not to let the threat of upstairs or downstairs loom over them in the impenetrable canopy of poison ivy that it very much had the capacity to.

What is going to happen is going to happen, not because it is ineffable, but simply because it _is._

The 'it' goes as follows.

Crowley taps his foot skittishly on the ground as the dial tone rings, while the moths in his gut waltz around his nervous, glowing heart. Aziraphale answers and he says, "Hey, Angel, how you been?" in a languid, disinterested tone that perhaps may have fooled him four thousand years ago. The left corner of Aziraphale's mouth lifts and he replies with a string of words that he knows will translate to white noise in Crowley's switchboard of a mind.

Crowley says, "Great great," regardless of what Aziraphale has said, then, "Listen, there's a new show on tonight -" and gives a brief synopsis, then adds, for good measure, some variant of "Sounds utterly excruciating, just your cup of tea."

The right corner of Aziraphale's mouth joins in the smiling. He says, "Well I suppose I'll shut up early then," having already shut up half an hour ago. They spend the next few hours in each other's tantalisingly close company and the whole affair feels like a predecessor to something, though neither admits it.

Afterwards, they retire to the bookshop and open something red and musty that darkens their blood to a deeper shade in a way that's surely a metaphor for something. They always laugh, they always reminisce, they skirt around the here and now and _never ever_ think about the future.

Sometimes, Crowley's eyes mist over. His mouth borrows the smile worn by tragic Juliet. Aziraphale wonders what that face means, but never asks, nor does he realise that he'd have his answer if he were only to look in a mirror.

At some point, Crowley sobers up and brushes imaginary dust particles off his knees, and Aziraphale wishes that he'd stay for long enough to make the gathered dust real.

He prefers to stay drunk for this bit.

The bit where Crowley says, "Best be off then. Plants to water... Schemes to... Scheme. I'll be in touch."

He opens the door, and Aziraphale raises his hand in a parting wave.

What he wants to say is, "come here." He wants to say, "come into my arms." He wants to say, "stay forever and never hurt again." He wants to say, "the stars shine brighter for knowing you made them." He wants to say, "you turn my blood to gasoline and alight it with precious glimpses of your eyes." He wants to say, "the volumes of poetry that line my shelves quiver in inadequacy faced with the poetry of your existence." He wants to say, "the touch of your skin on mine scribes soundless litanies, the brush of your fingertips is a cathedral hymn." He wants to say, "paint the things you deny yourself on my wings, and let me wrap them around you."

But of course, he settles for, "Goodnight."

***

After the apocalypse is averted, 'it' happens seventeen times.

The time that things change isn't one of those times.

The time that things change begins, like the seventeen 'its', with the ringing of Aziraphale's telephone, but after that, things go a lot differently.

"Aziraphale..."

Crowley's knuckles are white and his slim mobile phone in danger of cracking in his vice-like grip. Both are slick and shining in the moonlight under the sheen of rainwater. His hair is plastered to his forehead and his eyes exposed, sunglasses cracked and abandoned on the threshold of his flat where he'd discarded them.

He speaks Aziraphale's name like he would have spoken Her name once, with a dash of reverence that is - to his own detriment, perhaps - overwhelmed with longing. He hears a crackle as Aziraphale shifts the hold he has on the phone.

"Crowley dear, are you alright, you sound -"

"I need to talk to you."

Aziraphale lets out a worry gilded chuckle. 

"Well, I'm aware that my understanding of such things isn't exactly scholarly, but I was indeed under the impression that that's why humans invented these telephone contraptions."

Crowley sucks in a haggard breath, rainwater mixing with salt and threatening the edges of his nostrils.

"I need to talk to you in person."

"Now?"

"If it's..." he swallows a mouthful saliva, thickened by his fragile pride. "Not too much trouble."

Aziraphale's eyes flit to the window, where the rain is lashing as though it attends anger management classes on a Thursday evening and has a personal bone to pick with the London tarmac. The grandfather clock is seventeen minutes from tolling out three 'o' clock in the morning.

"Never. I'll be over in a jiff."

"I'm not..." he makes half a strangled noise at the back of his throat, and forces the pulsing bubble of feeling back down into his stomach, "I'm not at the flat."

"Oh." Suddenly, Aziraphale is overwhelmed by a sense of urgency. He cushions the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he pushes his left arm into his coat sleeve. "Where are you then?"

"I can't -" he slumps back against the wall. His head drops to his chest. "Just... Just come and find me. You can do that, can't you Angel?"

Aziraphale's fingertips quiver over the receiver as he nods to the empty room. He dares to lift his gaze to the sky as he whispers perhaps the most truthful thing he's voiced in millennia.

"Always."

***

Crowley is so soaked by the time the umbrella appears over his head that he doesn't even notice it. He very much does notice the warm hand that cups his cheek and the anxious expulsion of breath that forms a panic-marred sculpture of his name, because they sound like the things he dreams of under lonely sheets and wakes feeling the absence of.

"You found me then," he croaks, opening his eyes and lifting his head.

"Yes yes, of course I did," his free hand frets around Crowley's face, pushing his hair back and fussing around his chin, "Are you hurt, did someone -"

"M'fine. Well.. M'not, but -"

"Why 'not,' what does the 'not' mean?"

Crowley looks at him. Takes in the worry written on his forehead, the slightly slack jawed concern painted on his mouth. The curve of his nose, the lines of his ears. The dip of his neck, the bend of his elbow. He's a masterpiece, and Crowley feels like he hasn't paid the entry fee.

But this is _vital_.

He heaves himself off the floor, laboriously enough that Aziraphale has time to carefully keep the umbrella hovering between the two of them. This care proves fruitless when Crowley steps away and back into the rain. Aziraphale takes his unspoken cue to follow.

Crowley leads him along the wall, which turns out to be one of four making up a simple stone building. He stops at a thick and archaic-looking oak door, and a funny look clouds his face before he pushes it open. It swings with such strange fluidity that Aziraphale suspects it would not cooperate for anybody else.

Aziraphale steps in after him, into complete darkness. He shivers. There is an intangible, impenetrable stillness to the room. Oppressive. Stifling. He hears Crowley suck in a breath beside him, and then the room is light.

Aziraphale manages only half a gasp before the silence reclaims him.

He is standing in a room of gravestones, neat and modest like soldiers. Some are old and crumbling, some shine under the miraculous light. All have something important in common, but Aziraphale hasn't noticed that yet.

"Welcome to the family crypt," Crowley says quietly.

_Oh_.

Eyes cold and dry and movements stiff, Aziraphale bends down and brushes over the etched lettering of the stone closest to him with the tip of his thumb.

'Here lies Anthony J. Crowley.'

The words sit alone on a desert of stone and strike a diluted poison through Aziraphale's blood that he _never_ wants to feel the full potency of.

"They're me, of course. All me. My bodies. Has its practicalities of course, keeping up appearances - my Shadwells throughout history, who think I'm my dad, or my grandad, or in the case of Rogers who _just would not die_, my great grandad - it's good to have a grave to show, even if it's just for me, remember which me I'm meant to be. Was more of a souvenir than anything though, really, bit of a joke."

Aziraphale is beginning to feel light headed.

"Only it's not a joke anymore, is it Aziraphale?"

Aziraphale closes his eyes.

"Because if either of us discorporates again now..."

Aziraphale can _feel_ that Crowley is alive beside him, can hear him speaking, but the gravestone is etched into his mind, and he can _feel_ it beside his foot too.

"It wont just be a matter of paperwork. It'll be -"

"Crowley, can we go?"

Crowley's mouth snaps shut.

"You've made your point and done the theatrics and I can see, of course, that this is bothering you a great deal and I'm more than willing to carry on the conversation, but please for the love of-" he wrenches his eyes open, and Crowley's death lurks in his peripheral vision, "Not here. _I need to get out of here."_

Crowley nods slowly, and keeps nodding until it's decidedly more vigorous.

"Okay. We'll go to the bookshop."

"Yes. Let's go home."

"Well... Your home."

Aziraphale gives him a pointed look and Crowley is nowhere near optimistic enough to treat it as a correction, even though the implied meaning shines brighter than any nebula he ever designed.

***

Crowley could miracle himself dry, but he knows from experience that the dampness would somehow metaphysically linger in his bones if he were to do so. So he's most grateful for the tartan blanket that Aziraphale has swaddled him in and the somewhat reptilian (alright more than somewhat, clearly from _Pets at Home)_ heat lamp that is glowing away beside him.

"I don't know what you want me to say, Crowley," Aziraphale says quietly, hands folded primly into his lap in a display of etiquette that he wears like a safety blanket. "I can't tell you that I'm not afraid. I can't tell you that we're invincible. I certainly can't tell you that heaven and hell will hand over new bodies as though nothing ever happened."

He opens his mouth as if to continue. Doesn't. A moment passes. 

"You do," Crowley tells the floor. "You do know what I want you to say. You must."

Aziraphale frowns. 

"I'm afraid I don't."

"You _must_." The volume raises, his hands go to his hair, and something like a groan is ripped from his vocal chords. "Surely, I must be the most obtuse, blatant, lovesick bastard to ever walk this planet - I was certainly the first lovesick bastard to ever walk this planet, I-"

Aziraphale's world collapses beneath him. He feels his wings shiver on the celestial plane.

"I'm sorry, _lovesick_?" he asks faintly.

Crowley barks out an incredulous laugh.

"Yeah. Lovesick. And that's why I want you to say," he tears the blanket from his shoulders and it pools beside him. His elbows are rested on his knees and his head hangs down, forehead inches from Aziraphale's chest, cage for a hummingbird heart, "That there's a sense of urgency now. That we're no longer truly immortal, so we'd better get on living. That once upon a time we had all the time we could lay our hands on, and now we only have until one of us is careless, or one of them is careless, or until the sky falls in with us underneath it. I want you to say that you want to spend every moment at the opera with me, or feeding the ducks with me, or bickering over what constitutes decent music with me. I want you to say that we're pretty much human now."

He doesn't say the last bit, which is of course, "I want you to say that you love me."

Instead, he pulls away from Aziraphale and collapses back into the sofa with a solitary sob as the doves of what he's said come to nest on his chest instead of flying away. He covers his face with his hands, ready to stand and make a run for it, when the sofa creaks beside him.

"Come here." Aziraphale whispers. "Come into my arms."

Crowley falls impossibly still, for fear of shattering what is surely a delicate mirage. But then, Aziraphale's fingertips find the top of his spine. They travel the length of it, barely daring to touch but still igniting it like a bonfire. When they meet the top of the hip, the palm flattens and Crowley is being drawn into Aziraphale's side. His head settles into the crook of his neck, too overwhelmed to resist, too euphoric to resist.

"Stay forever and never hurt again."

***

On clear nights, they talk about the stars.

Crowley wear his glasses less and less.

Sometimes, they read poetry. 

But the poetry of touch is tenfold more melodic. 

Crowley no longer has anything to paint, but Aziraphale wraps his wings around him anyway. 

***

And in the end, it's all very human. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!!
> 
> A comment would make my heart sing!!


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